I'm Evolving

I grew up the youngest of three kids. You could say that I was a magical surprise dropped off by a flying stork, or you could use different choice words that could potentially scar any child for life. I am a bit younger than my brother and sister, so I always had to be the tagalong. They would take turns babysitting me even though they were much too young for that. Most of memories are of being in my sister's care during the summer. I loved when she would make me breakfast. I would have different options for my eggs: big fluffy cloud eggs, flat hard eggs, or eggs that you could dunk toast in!

Amazing how the memory works. Big fluffy cloud eggs? What a great older sister. Then there was the egg on my forehead that happened while my mother was at work. I was with my sister Mattina—yes, that’s Italian for morning—riding bikes around the neighborhood. We were with a few boys her age, and I of course was being ignored. I hit a stick and flipped over the handlebars straight onto my forehead. It was really bad looking, blue and red. I can still feel the ridge in the bone, believe it or not.

We didn’t ever wear helmets, and I grew up in the era where it was completely okay to sit on your mom's lap in the front seat. This was also during the grunge era, yay me! I would wear Mattina's baggy clothes. My sister is four and a half years older than I and, even back then, a good seven inches taller. So I was real cute, you know what I'm saying. I felt really cool hanging out with her friends, smoking cigarettes and drinking Zima with a Jolly Rancher in it. Black lights and Blind Melon.

It just hit me that my sister went away to college the same year I started high school.

My high school years were rough with a capital R. As a young girl I went to a small private school then went on to a large public high school. Switching to a large school was so freaking hard. I didn’t have any real friends but naturally connected to the older crowd, as I was taught to do growing up. I became the cool freshman girl hanging with the seniors and cutting class! I never cut my drama class with Ms. Bishop, though. I learned how to ad lib, which was my favorite. I also had to write a play for our spring showcase of multiple short plays performed one after the other.

My boss at the time was a writer. I was pretty chummy with him and asked for help. It was probably a slightly inappropriate relationship on his part, although he never tried anything. We wrote the play together. It was about a teenage girl who struggles with the normal feelings of liking other girls. The drama of the play involved the teenage girl getting a phone call announcing that the girl she likes has been killed in a car wreck. Her boyfriend is there with her when she receives the phone call.

I was a weird, creative kid and have no clue how I came up with that story. I remember sitting at my boss’s house when the whole thing just flew out of my mouth. Needless to say, my teacher was unamused and with no explanation asked me to create a play with a new storyline. I was crushed and automatically assumed I was a horrible writer. It never crossed my mind that a piece about an undercover teenage lesbian heartbreak was anything but perfect, let alone not allowed on a high school stage. Recently I was trying to pinpoint the moment that I stopped trying to be a writer, and this was it. Doesn't matter anymore, suckers. I'm a writer now, and marriage is legal for everyone. Boom!

I could honestly say I never had a real meaningful friendship (excluding my nine-year-old Cockapoo, Opal) until July two years ago. I have been blessed with a best friend, Jessica, whom I can share my soul with. My innermost dark secrets and thoughts—she knows all of them. I know, as in, really know, that she will always be the one I can count on. We have been in each other’s lives for ten years, playing different roles from time to time, until we became best friends. Now we know we are linked for life. This has actually allowed me to share a lot of myself with clients and tell them about my experiences. It feels good to share my heart with the world.

I've kept in my thoughts for so long that I have to learn how to communicate and express authentically. That’s why I bought The Artist’s Way. I have so much to say, but sometimes I feel I have to be asked in order to say what's on my mind. This might be a politeness thing. Or it could be from having spiritual experiences as a kid and having no one to reveal them to. I had no way to understand what was going on in my head. A lot of songs speak to feeling lonely in a crowded room, and it can often feel that way. I've just started my journey of understanding how souls talk to me.

I was having brunch today with friends who also communicate with souls or the loss of those beloved to them. We laughed about the big moment of revelation. I thought it was going to be this huge light switch, wizard behind the curtain, grand finale of arrival and that I was going to see dead people everywhere and hear them all the time, too. Thank the universe that’s not how it happened.

Instead, spirits communicate with me in a more gentle way. It's called clairvoyance, which is French for clear vision. People who are clairvoyant can close their eyes and see visions from passed loved ones as vividly as if they were in the here and now. My whole life I believed I just had a very detailed wild imagination. I thought the way my mind saw things was no different from what others saw. Now I know that spirits have been trying to talk to me for a very long time. I just didn't realize it. I had to figure it out.

At my Developing group one night I kept seeing this movie scene play over and over again. It was the movie “Practical Magic.” The spirit that I was connected to showed me three parts of the movie. The first was the two older sisters hanging around the kitchen island laughing. The second was a close-up of Sandra Bullock. The third was where one of the characters was buried. I then saw a flash of a cartoon apple that reminded me of the poisoned apple in Snow White. When I read for someone I don't say which movie is being shown to me. I only describe what I feel from the scene of the movie. My reading went something like this "I have a family member whose name is Sandra and who was very close to the women in her family. She was accidentally poisoned in her late thirties and passed away. She was buried by the water with red roses and bull frogs close by. Her message for you is to know how important it is to have close relationships with women.”

The person I read for confirmed everything I said. The spirit I connected with was her grandmother’s sister, Sandra. She went camping and ate poison berries by accident. She was buried by the water. My face obviously registered how stunned I was, and I'm pretty sure I said, “No shit!”

My whole life I thought this was my imagination and that everyone's brain functioned the same, but apparently: no.

This past week my mother had surgery to repair the tendon in her ankle. My life isn't always butterflies and rainbows. I mean, it mostly is, but it hits me in the face too. The night before my mother's surgery I couldn’t sleep. Fear was taking over every part of me as if I had just fallen asleep in a Freddy Krueger movie. It happens, and it sucks. When fear comes over me, especially when I'm trying to get a read on a situation, I can get wrong messages. I was so scared I was going to lose my mom that I prayed, begged and pleaded. I promised that if my mother didn’t die I would change and work really hard to always speak kindly to her and never take another moment for granted. I never had meant something so intently before.

I have heard so many stories of a loved one dying and then becoming the person that the medium communicates with. I cried all night and mourned the loss of my mother. It was real, and I felt it. My mother is alive and well. I remember the promise I made. I was given a second chance to enjoy every moment with her.

There was a moment today where she got all Jekyll/Hyde on me, and my promise almost went out the window. Then I realized it was the perfect opportunity to act or react differently. Ta da! I'm evolving.